


The Best Laid Plans

by MJ (mjr91)



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Barba thinks so anyway, Did I say OMC, M/M, Rentboys, Unofficial Sequel, don't tell me you don't know Barba has a suit fetish, world's most gorgeous necktie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2019-01-08 02:01:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12244914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mjr91/pseuds/MJ
Summary: Rafael Barba has plans for his Friday night.  The hotel is booked.  The dinner reservations are made.  The theater tickets are in hand.  And he's lined someone up for the evening.  Nothing could possibly go wrong.





	The Best Laid Plans

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AHumanFemale](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AHumanFemale/gifts).
  * Inspired by [TINSTAAFL (There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12216537) by [MJ (mjr91)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mjr91/pseuds/MJ). 



> Could be a standalone, could be a sequel to TINSTAAFL (There is no such thing as a free lunch)

Rafael Barba was cradled in one of the plush blue bar stools at Forty Four at The Royalton.  As Times Square area hotels went, it managed to be both historic and modern at the same time, while having enough alcohol to sink a battleship along with a crew of bartenders stolen from the Platonic ideal of cocktail crafters.  That added up to an obscenely perfect Scotch selection, some of the few cocktails that Barba would actually drink (the 44 Palmer was perhaps one of the best things ever done to bourbon besides juleps), and a great place to watch people while not being disturbed, since no one there ever bothered to talk to anyone they hadn’t come with unless it was late in the evening – and it wasn’t.  He’d checked out of the office early for him, even for a Friday, had come over to The Royalton, checked in, and had showered and shaved again before changing suits and heading down to the bar.

He was in a gray suit with a very fine blue thread running through it, a white shirt with a blue tattersall, and a gray and blue Zegna paisley tie of an almost indecent thickness to its woven patterns.  His favorite Marine Star watch was on his wrist, because a Rolex was too flashy, too obvious, too tacky; he hadn’t bothered with a vest, and he’d been surprisingly subdued in matching a navy pocket square and navy cashmere socks.  He wanted to look great without making an actual statement.  There was an agenda for the evening and he didn’t plan to ruin it.

It wasn’t even necessary to check his watch.  Five o’clock, on the dot, and he could see his agenda for the evening walking through the door.  He looked just as he’d described himself on the phone -- navy three-piece suit, pale blue shirt, solid-color dove-gray tie that looked so soft in the hotel’s lighting that Barba wanted to pet the damned thing like a newborn kitten.  Said agenda nodded towards Barba with a slight smile and a small, discreet wave before settling down beside him at the bar.

“Hi.  You’re Felipe?”  Twinkling eyes shone directly into Barba’s.  This  one was young, handsome, well-dressed… and adorable.  And Barba still wanted to feel that necktie.  It glistened as if it had come out of the sea, and it had a vague blue undertone that went with the suit, the shirt, and the speaker’s eyes.  It was wrong to be that enamored of the man’s tie.

“Right.  You’re Gianni?”

“Absolutely.  Can’t believe you pronounced that right – it’s hard for people not to say ‘Johnny’ instead.”

“I’m Cuban.  I was raised bilingual.  I’d better be able to get that one right.  I’m happy to meet you – and, my manners – I’ve started already; can I get you a drink?”

“I’d love one.   Haven’t been here before, but I hear they have great drinks.  Any recommendations?”  Gianni looked at Barba expectantly, as if he knew all things.  Having a handsome younger man looking at you like that was a thrill in any circumstances, and these were undoubtedly the best.  Drinks, dinner, show, and back to the hotel, where the room he’d booked had a soaking tub for two.  The Royalton, despite his preferences, didn’t have the best room service, but he’d tipped the concierge to be sure a bottle of wine and two glasses made it up to the fifteenth floor for the tub.  He’d also made sure to get one of the fifty or so rooms at The Royalton that boasted a working fireplace, and to have that tub filled and the fire going just before they got back from the theatre. 

“I hear the smoked Old Fashioned is amazing, but I haven’t tried it.  It’s hard to pull me away from single malts.”  He flagged the bartender.  “You want one?”

“I’m game,” Gianni agreed cheerily.  “Never heard of smoking drinks before, but there’s something new every day.”  Barba ordered one for Gianni, and another Scotch for himself.  “Thanks.”

“Da nada.  So, I was thinking… I’m waiting to hear if we have dinner reservations for Trattoria Tricolore, and then I have tickets for the revival of ‘Torch Song’.”  The bartender came back with the Scotch, a glass, and a smoking gun and began assembling Gianni’s Old Fashioned in front of them.

“Hmm.  Looks like we’re already getting a show here,” Barba’s companion observed.  “You might be getting more than you bargained for.”  The bartender departed after presenting the drink to Gianni’s and Barba’s approval.  Gianni tasted the result of the barkeep’s alchemy, smiled, and raised the glass to his host.

“I don’t know,” Barba mused.  “I hoped I was bargaining for a good bit for the evening.  Speaking of which –“  His hand slid discreetly, but in Gianni’s plain view, to his pocket.

Gianni shook his head at Barba.  “Later, babe.  Plenty of time when we get back.”  He moved one hand to Barba’s on the bar, draping it over his wrist.  “I’m more interested in hearing about you right now.”

An old line, but it always worked.  Even pretending not to be Rafael Barba, Barba’s vanity could still be fed, and the man who does not become even more attracted to someone who wants to know all about him for as long as he can stand to talk about himself can rarely be found.  Harvard lawyer, apartment with a great view, theatre lover, voracious reader…

“You strike me like, I don’t know… a Pynchon fan?  Vonnegut?  One or the other, not both.”

“’All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental.’  How’s that?”  Barba returned to his Scotch with his free hand, not wanting to have Gianni move his large, warm hand from his wrist.  That it was still there after all the chat made Barba wonder if dinner and the play were even worth the bother.

“’Shit, money, and the World, the three American truths,” Gianni replied, smiling again, damn those ridiculously twinkling eyes.

“I see we may be literarily incompatible,” Barba teased.  “Pynchon?  Next thing I know, you’ll start quoting Walter Briggs.”

The younger man shook his head.  “Anyone can quote Briggs, and they do.  I prefer ‘Bright was the light of my last martini on my moral horizon’ to almost anything.  I’ll bet you can’t place it.”

Barba set his drink down.  It was a brilliant line – the sort you wished you’d thought of yourself, or at least he did.  Maybe he could twist it around to suit his own purposes, replacing martini with MacAllan.  “You’re right – I can’t.  And I love that.  Who wrote it?” 

“Mailer,” Gianni chuckled.  “If it’s alcohol, it’s probably Mailer.  The greatest American novelist, in his own mind.”

“An ego so huge it required its own chair,” Barba replied.  “You don’t seem like the Mailer type, though.  I don’t know if there is a Mailer type, but I picture someone… I don’t know, obviously literate enough to read Mailer, but… middle aged, straight, with a problem with women and major anger control issues?”

There was a real, deep laugh.  “I’ve read Mailer.  I didn’t say I adore him.  I just like that line, like you do.”  Barba liked that laugh, too.  He liked Gianni’s laugh.  His eyes.  His tie.  That part was just wrong, but if Gianni had picked it out himself, it said volumes about him.  He liked that Gianni liked to read, and clearly not just crap, and that the guy had brains.  He liked that Gianni really seemed to be having a good time for something beyond the cash envelope in Barba’s pocket.  Of course you wanted the promised result that was basically guaranteed by the money, but you wanted to think that the guy you’d hired was actually having a good time with you.  “By the way, Felipe, we’ve been talking forever.  I’m guessing the show’s at eight; what time are your dinner reservations?”

Barba checked his watch, then flagged the bartender again to get the concierge.  “I asked the concierge to make reservations when I got in this afternoon.  I didn’t check back.  Let me take care of it.”

They continued on with small talk, Gianni flirting with him with charming subtlety rather than laying on indiscriminate charm or a long line of come-ons.  Barba’s ego was close to going through the roof when the concierge finally made her way into the bar.

The concierge, a pretty young woman in a dark suit, a hotel badge next to one lapel, bent down to them.  “I am so sorry.  Trattoria Trecolore was booked solid until after the show.  I made a reservation for you for immediately after – call me when you’re finishing up there, and I’ll have staff take care of the room as you requested.  I really apologize.  I should have told you nearly an hour ago, but we got a Saudi oil minister I had to get set up.  He’s a day early.”  She waggled a hand.  “If you want me to get you a table here, I’ll see that everything’s comped.  Alcohol too.  You’re one of our favorite clients.”  
  
Barba looked over at Gianni, who shrugged sweetly, smiling at the concierge.  Then he looked up at the concierge.  “Thanks, Christine.  But cancel that post-show reservation; I’d rather just come back here.”

She looked relieved.  “Oh, thank you.  My apologies – this is entirely my fault.   But I hear the hangar steaks are excellent today, if I do say so.”

Barba sighed as she walked off to speak to the restaurant host.  “And I was looking forward to that fettucine Alfredo.”  He had been.  He liked Trecolore better than Lidia Bastianich’s restaurant.

Gianni’s hand, previously on Barba’s wrist, dropped to his knee. “There’s always tomorrow night, hmm?”  Blue eyes peered at Barba through long lashes.

The return gaze was amused and appraising.  “That’s not exactly the world’s most subtle upsell.  You’re not already booked for tomorrow?”

A one-shouldered shrug.  “Even if I am, one phone call and I’m not.  Unavoidably detained in Albany by a certain elected official who pays my rent?”

“Lying through your teeth?”

“All in a day’s work, isn’t it?  But if I am scheduled tomorrow, clearly I’m more interested in your company than his, and that much certainly isn’t a lie.”

Barba toyed with his glass.  “I suppose I should be flattered.”

“You should.  How devoted are you to that show you have tickets for?”

“They were a gift.  I’d have picked ‘1984’ or ‘M. Butterfly’ on my own.  Why?”

“Perhaps you’d prefer room service?”  Gianni looked at Barba inquiringly.  “We might find it more comfortable.  And I can show you that much earlier why I think you should make dinner reservations for both of us for tomorrow night.”  A finger began trailing along Barba’s thigh to drive home the point.

Barba swallowed thickly.  “I… think room service is in order.”  He flagged the bartender, told him to put the drinks on his room charge, then asked him to tell the host that he’d be ordering from upstairs.  The bartender just smiled knowingly, causing Barba to swear to himself he’d never tip the man again.  He narrowly avoided adding an “if I ever come back here again” in his mind just for further insult to the bartender’s smirk.

Heading to the elevator, Gianni’s hand in his, Barba walked almost directly into a still-apologetic and fawning Christine.  It was just as well.  “Christine, tell the front desk the room’s for Saturday night as well.  Switch the Trattoria Trecolore reservation to tomorrow at seven.  And I’ll call down in a bit for the fireplace service.”

She smiled at him broadly, looking relieved.  “Oh, good.  Are you ordering room service tonight?  I’ll make sure they don’t charge you.”  A sigh.  “Mr. Barba, Detective Carisi, I’m so glad the restaurant problem didn’t ruin your regular date night.”

In that instant, Barba suddenly completely understood the word “buzzkill.”  On the other hand, the thought of Carisi naked in front of that fireplace, with nothing but that ridiculously wonderful necktie, sounded like the perfect way to get his mind back off track.  “Not at all, Christine.  Thanks.”

 

 

 

  
  


 


End file.
